New to rotary scene help!

[rx7kirby]

hello guys i am a previous miata owner from california. i recent moved to hawaii and someone is selling an 84 rx7 with a 4 carb upgrade with headers and exhaust, gutted, with the fc rear end and breaks and lsd, and roll cage, adjustibile tokicos for $1,000. the car is currently not running due to ignition switch being bad and the carbertator needs tuning from what the seller is telling me. I am asking your guys help because i have never owned a rotary car in my life and i was wondering will this be more of a project then a quick fix dd for me?

[Lucky]

4 carb upgrade? Do you mean 4-barrel carb? Cos they had a four-barrel Niki carb as standard. If it's really just ignition switch woes it should be easy enough to fix/swap and it ought to run even without the right carb jetting, just not necessarily very well lol. Or it could be the seller's trying one on and it needs a lot more work than that. Sounds like it could be an interesting project if you've the time, money and inclination though

[rx7kirby]

Yea its a 4 barrel carb. Can I get an estimate to have it tuned and new ignition switch?

[rx7kirby]

Also how does a fb handle compare to a miata because its either I buy a miata or the fb

[rx7kirby]

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[FBRXMIKE85]

honestly Kirby I would jump at that for $1000 bucks! It's well worth it and FB's handle really well IMO,

[Steve-A]

Hi Kirby, welcome to the FB forum

For a car with all that kit I have to say $1000 sounds pretty cheap! The FC rear end conversion is once I've not heard of before, mostly we hear about FC front subframe conversions so you get the rack and pinion steering.

Most of us on the FB forum are based in the UK/europe, where the specs for FBs were subtly different from the US, mostly down to emissions stuff. What brand of 4 barrel carb have you got? I believe there's quite a lot of info about carb upgrades, on the rx7club website hats US based where you guys seem have a much larger selection of alternate carbs to swap on. Most people over here either stick with the standard carb or go for Weber IDA carbs.

That said, most carbs respond very well to a basic clean out and set-up which should be quite easily done if you can get a manual for the carb off the net.

I also had a miata/mx5 before buying my FB. On the whole they have very similar feel. The FB just feels like a miata but slightly larger and maybe not quite as nimble at low speed. The live axel rear suspension on the FB doesn't grip as well as the miata but it does make me smile more

[rx7kirby]

thank you guys so much for the info i've been reading about it and i decided to buy the fb just because i've never got the rotary experience and i can't pass on the deal either. question though ignition relay switch is the reason for it not starting or turning over, can i just do a relay bypass to the battery and see if that works? did it to my old z31t.

[rx7kirby]

can anyone tell me the most important component of the car that i got to watch out for? don't know much about wankel engine except their light efficient and eat a lot of gas lol like how do i maintain these bad boys. would i have to take it to the shop every month?

[Lucky]

Main thing on a rotary is to remember the oil does a lot more work than in a piston engine, including plenty of cooling so change it often. They can't stand overheating, so make sure the cooling system is as good as it can be. Other than that, the tales of poor reliability tend to come from the turbocharged models like the later FD where the heat tended to muller engines quicker, and they were on more of a knife-edge tuning-wise. On an FB there's no reason the engine won't go on for ages if you look after it. In the UK they seem to rust away before they blow up! Change the oil, lol